Late summer may be the time to wrap up family vacations and barbecues, but it also signals the beginning of budget season for next year. I find the prospect of having to forecast what is needed 12-24 months in the future a unique challenge in an ever-evolving technology landscape. How much of your infrastructure can (and should) you shift from capital expenditure to an operations model? Will you get locked into technology on the decline rather than what can improve your operational capabilities moving ahead? Has your organization embraced change for change’s sake or have you (as Mercedes-Benz is discovering how to mutate the sales experience with the Apple iPad in its dealerships) found unique adaptations that simplify and yet accelerate the sales cycle?
One (technology) thing is certain: the “cloud” is here to stay, and it’s your job to understand how shifting services from an on-premise architecture to one that can be more effectively and efficiently hosted by someone else will impact your business – and budget. I’m going to delve deeper into cloud services in next month’s newsletter, so let’s stick to the dollars for the moment. As you ponder how much you have to spend on hardware refresh for desktops, servers, networking and storage next year, or whether the prospect of an examiner’s audit should push you to invest in a new security program, ask yourself if there might be a better way.
Though for years Simpler-Webb has earned money from selling and implementing technology, we’re more concerned with earning a reputation for transforming IT to serve your business, not the other way around. So, should you want to bounce an idea off us, call any time. We love a good challenge, and budget planning is just a means to moving your capabilities forward.
Regards,
Jeff Simpler
Co-founder and CMO
ARTICLE REVIEW: An Imperative Investment: Formulating a business continuity plan and supporting it with technology are initiatives that reap dividends.
By Maria Sullivan for biztechmagazine.com
REVIEW:
In this article, Maria Sullivan takes a look at the real cost of downtime in finance, healthcare, retail and manufacturing industries and proposes that, while natural disasters are daunting, human error is a more constant and persistent threat to data. She suggests calculating the actual cost of downtime for presentation to stakeholders in order to gain support for business continuity planning initiatives. In addition, the technologies that support business continuity have great potential to be business enablers on a daily basis.
ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY biztechmagazine.com, by Maria Sullivan:
So far, 2010 has brought blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions — and now hurricane season has begun. But as daunting as such catastrophes are to business, human error poses an even greater threat because it is more likely to occur than any natural disaster.
What happens if a backhoe slices a T-1 line, a misconfigured router brings down your e-commerce site, or an aging accounting server fails? Such mishaps demonstrate the critical need for a business continuity plan that will keep the company up and running. To minimize risk and guard against data loss, it’s imperative to implement a disaster recovery strategy and support it with appropriate technology.
Measuring Risk
Formulating a business continuity plan, getting stakeholders on board, and purchasing and deploying equipment takes time and money. But consider the consequences of not doing so should disaster strike: downtime, diminished productivity, data loss, and damaged customer goodwill. It can take years to build a business, but only minutes to ruin its reputation.
The average midsize company suffers 16 to 20 hours of network, system or application downtime per year, according to IDC, at an average loss of $70,000 per downtime hour. Tell that to stakeholders, and you’ll get their attention.
Calculating the cost of downtime goes a long way toward justifying investments in resilient, redundant networks, hardware, and systems. For a ballpark estimate on labor costs, determine the number of workers who would be affected, how much they would be affected, and the average employee-cost-per-hour for an outage. For revenue loss, factor in gross yearly revenue, total yearly business hours, and the percentage impact for varying outage hours.
In the long run, the cost of investing in business continuity and conducting disaster drills can pay huge dividends. What’s more, many of the technologies that aid resilience and disaster recovery are ones that companies can benefit from on a daily basis. Desktop and server virtualization ease administration; network and systems management provide a cohesive view of the enterprise; and secondary connections can be used to replicate backup data to another site. That means you can immediately start to recoup a return on your investment.
“You can look at business continuity as a cost or overhead to the business similar to an insurance protection policy, or you can view it as a business enabler,” says Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst of the Server and StorageIO Group. “The choice is yours.”
Putting a plan in place does take time and effort, but so do most things worth having. Should disaster strike, nobody in your organization will doubt for one second that business continuity was a wise use of company resources.
Downtime Damage by Industry
The cost per hour of downtime is inversely proportional to the average number of downtime hours per year. That’s because companies with high-value operations tend to deploy technology and best practices to reduce risk.
| |
Productivity Loss/Hour
|
Revenue Loss/Hour
|
Downtime Hours/Year
|
|
Finance
|
$3,640
|
$9,997,500
|
3.57
|
|
Retail
|
$2,580
|
$397,500
|
7.75
|
|
Healthcare
|
$1,250
|
$157,500
|
21.70
|
|
Manufacturing
|
$3,060
|
$59,930
|
8.01
|
SOURCE: IDC’s Business Value Research, 2009
NEWS
Microsoft Announcements: Windows Server 2003 and 2003 R2 Mainstream Support Ended Tuesday 7/13/10
Mainstream Support for Windows Server 2003 and 2003 R2 expired Tuesday 7/13. This means, moving forward customers may only receive security patches and lose the rights to receive no-charge incident support, warranty claims, and design changes and features requests. Customers may still pay for support incidents, but must have SA to receive Hotfix support.
For more information on mainstream and extended support phases:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/extended-hotfix-support.aspx
Marketing Team wins Microsoft’s Annual Marketing Excellence Award!
Simpler-Webb is being recognized as the winner of the South Central Area H2 FY2010 Marketing Excellence Partner Award. This award recognizes partners who constantly seek to improve their processes and practices, sharing their expertise and ideas with others. The award also recognizes partners who leverage and build on Microsoft’s activities to provide great value in reaching customers to help solve business problems using Microsoft technology.
EVENTS
Going to the Harland Financial Solutions’ Connections OR Symitar Educational Conference? Us too! Look out for conference communications from us soon! We’ll be inviting you to participate in our Fill in the Blanks game.
BLOGS by Danny Snyder, Senior Network Consultant
New, less expensive Cisco Switches
Earlier this year, Cisco announced new stackable switches that put them in a better position to compete with some of the lower-cost competitors such as HP and Dell. These switches still incorporate the features that set Cisco above their competition but also offer a more competitive price point.
The new switches come in three product lines - the Catalyst 2960S, Catalyst 3560X, and Catalyst 3750X - and offer features such as 24 or 48 ports of Gigabit Ethernet, Power over Ethernet, advanced stacking capabilities, 10Gb uplinks, and redundant power options in the highest-end configurations.
To discuss how these switches can fit into your environment, please contact your Simpler-Webb account rep.
Cisco Live! Networkers 2010 Recap
I had originally planned on a daily blog post about Cisco Live! but that rapidly fell by the wayside as it was super busy, information overload, and long, tiring days. That said, it was definitely worth it, and I was able to learn a great deal about the Cisco Nexus switching architecture, network management, network security, and Cisco Unified Wireless Networking. I also had the opportunity to take (and pass!) the test for the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Wireless certification and one of the four tests for the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Wireless certification. The test for the CCNP Wireless certification also renewed my CCNP, CCDP (design) and CCSP (security) certifications which were coming up for renewal in a couple months.
If you haven’t been to Cisco Live!, it’s a great event that provides a lot of opportunity to learn about new technologies Cisco is working on or has just released, as well as existing technologies. If you have the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it!
INTERVIEW: Matt Bastek, Virtualization Consultant
What’s your job like on a daily basis?
Hectic! Transitioning from one role to another is not easy. I just transitioned from a Service Desk Consultant to the Virtualization Consultant position.
What other employees do you work with the most?
Pretty much all of the Server and Networking team
Tell us the story of how you got hired at Simpler-Webb.
My wife and I planned to move to a more up-and-coming city from where we lived in MA (Massachusets). We decided on Austin, TX since my wife has family in Dallas and Tyler. We moved to Tyler while we looked for housing in Austin. Once in Austin we went on crazy job searches, and I was lucky to find Simpler-Webb.
How long have you been doing this type of work?
12+ years
What do you like to do most when you’re not at work?
Play videogames. I’m a nerdy kid at heart.
What is the last book you read?
“Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants” – actually still reading (trying to)
What do you like best about your technology focus area?
Virtualization is such a cool technology that has really matured in the past couple of years. It’s forced Microsoft to rethink their licensing models and given IT firms a lot more flexibility and redundancy with key components of their environment.
How long have you been at Simpler-Webb?
Just over 2 years
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